Guns and magic. Cowboys and monsters. That's what usually springs to mind when you mention Weird West, or "western fantasy" as it can also be labeled. That's what does for me anyway, but like any sub-genre, there are many different elements making up its DNA, and as such Weird West is much richer than just a mash-up of spells and six-guns.
When I started reading and writing Weird West, I often wondered where the term had come from, as it seemed a rather broad, catch-all name. I was surprised to find out the term got traction in the 1970s, in DC's Weird Western Tales comic series, which featured Jonah Hex for several issues. They pretty much set the name of the genre in stone right there and then, however, the comics were arguably not the roots of what we know as Weird West.
Pulp magazines back in the 1930's popularised western fiction that had a weird slant. Stories by Robert E. Howard, Charles G. Finney, and other authors started the trend of mixing classic western elements with horror, the occult, and fantasy. The trend continued from then on. Lon Williams Lee Winters stories threw in greek mythological creatures in the '50s. Joe R. Lansdale's Dead In the West saw a full mash-up of zombies and Native American folklore in 1986, alongside Stephen King's Dark Tower saga, which threw sci-fi into the mix. For a lot of fantasy authors, myself included, King's adventures of the Gunslinger is considered to be the canonical beginnings of modern Weird West, and led to a surge in the genre that has carried through to today.
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There has actually been quite a boom in the last decade, and the genre continues to be redefined and expanded. There have been some fantastic Weird West releases in recent years, such as Red Country by Joe Abercrombie is a firm favourite, as well as The Six-Gun Tarot by R. S. Belcher, and One Night in Sixes by Arianne "Tex" Thompson. The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson also had a western fantasy feel. Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente is also a brilliant retelling of Snow White as a gunslinger in a mythical Wild West.
At the core of what we know as Weird West sits a strong western element, either in world, time period, setting, or characters. Around this core traditionally sit elements of horror and the supernatural, which slot very nicely into a western setting. The era of the Wild West was a time of cultures spreading and meeting, with European ideals and backgrounds clashing with the vast and varied cultures of Native American peoples, as well as African cultures brought to the Americas during the deplorable years of slavery. There were also huge Hispanic and Asian influences towards the latter years of the frontier. It was this almighty culture clash, and this period of uncertainty and the unknown that gave rise to a rich and original Wild West folklore, packed full of ghost stories, heroes, outlaws, haunted mines, burial grounds, and of course, a key Native American influence. And, as much of Native American culture was misunderstood at the time, a lot of western folklore has a mystical slant to it. It's why it comes as no surprise that horror was the first genre to be mixed with westerns.
